The genetics of cancer is complicated, involving multiple dominant, positive regulators of the transformed state (oncogenes) as well as multiple recessive, negative regulators (tumor suppressor genes). Over one hundred oncogenes have been characterized. Fewer than a dozen tumor suppressor genes have been identified, but the number is expected to increase beyond fifty (Knudson, 1993).
The involvement of so many genes underscores the complexity of the growth control mechanisms that operate in cells to maintain the integrity of normal tissue. This complexity is manifest in another way. So far, no single gene has been shown to participate in the development of all, or even the majority of human cancers. The most common oncogenic mutations are in the H-ras gene, found 10-15% of all solid tumors (Anderson et al., 1992). The most frequently mutated tumor suppressor genes are the TP53 gene, homozygously deleted in roughly 50% of all tumors, and CDKN2, which was homozygously deleted in 46% of tumor cell lines examined (Kamb et al., 1994). Without a target that is common to all transformed cells, the dream of a "magic bullet" that can destroy or revert cancer cells while leaving normal tissue unharmed is improbable. The hope for a new generation of specifically targeted antitumor drugs may rest on the ability to identify tumor suppressor genes or oncogenes that play general roles in control of cell division.
The tumor suppressor genes which have been cloned and characterized influence susceptibility to 1) Retinoblastoma (RB1); 2) Wilms' tumor (WT1); 3) Li-Fraumeni (TP53); 4) Familial adenomatous polyposis (APC); 5) Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1); 6) Neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2); 7) von Hippel-Lindau syndrome (VHL); 8) Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2A (MEN2A); and 9) Melanoma (CDKN2).
Tumor suppressor loci that have been mapped genetically but not yet isolated include genes for: Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 (MEN1); Lynch cancer family syndrome 2 (LCFS2); Neuroblastoma (NB); Basal cell nevus syndrome (BCNS); Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome (BWS); Renal cell carcinoma (RCC); Tuberous sclerosis 1 (TSC1); and Tuberous sclerosis 2 (TSC2). The tumor suppressor genes that have been characterized to date encode products with similarities to a variety of protein types, including DNA binding proteins (WT1), ancillary transcription regulators (RB1), GTPase activating proteins or GAPs (NF1), cytoskeletal components (NF2), membrane bound receptor kinases (MEN2A), cell cycle regulators (CDKN2) and others wit no obvious similarity to known proteins (APC and VHL).
In many cases, the tumor suppressor gene originally identified through genetic studies has been shown to be lost or mutated in some sporadic tumors. This result suggests that regions of chromosomal aberration may signify the position of important tumor suppressor genes involved both in genetic predisposition to cancer and in sporadic cancer.
One of the hallmarks of several tumor suppressor genes characterized to date is that they are deleted at high frequency in certain tumor types. The deletions often involve loss of a single allele, a so-called loss of heterozygosity (LOH), but may also involve homozygous deletion of both alleles. For LOH, the remaining allele is presumed to be nonfunctional, either because of a preexisting inherited mutation, or because of a secondary sporadic mutation.
Breast cancer is one of the most significant diseases that affects women. At the current rate, American women have a 1 in 8 risk of developing breast cancer by age 95 (American Cancer Society, 1992). Treatment of breast cancer at later stages is often futile and disfiguring, making early detection a high priority in medical management of the disease. Ovarian cancer, although less frequent than breast cancer is often rapidly fatal and is the fourth most common cause of cancer mortality in American women. Genetic factors contribute to an ill-defined proportion of breast cancer incidence, estimated to be about 5% of all cases but approximately 25% of cases diagnosed before age 40 (Claus et al., 1991). Breast cancer has been subdivided into two types, early-age onset and late-age onset, based on an inflection in the age-specific incidence curve around age 50. Mutation of one gene, BRCA1, is thought to account for approximately 45% of familial breast cancer, but at least 80% of families with both breast and ovarian cancer (Easton et al., 1993).
Intense efforts to isolate the BRCA1 gene have proceeded since it was first mapped in 1990 (Hall et al., 1990; Narod et al., 1991). A second locus, BRCA2, has recently been mapped to chromosome 13q (Wooster et al., 1994) and appears to account for a proportion of early-onset breast cancer roughly equal to BRCA1, but confers a lower risk of ovarian cancer. The remaining susceptibility to early-onset breast cancer is divided between as yet unmapped genes for familial cancer, and rarer germline mutations in genes such as TP53 (Malkin et al., 1990). It has also been suggested that heterozygote carriers for defective forms of the Ataxia-Telangectasia gene are at higher risk for breast cancer (Swift et al., 1976; Swift et al., 1991). Late-age onset breast cancer is also often familial although the risks in relatives are not as high as those for early-onset breast cancer (Cannon-Albright et al., 1994; Mettlin et al., 1990). However, the percentage of such cases due to genetic susceptibility is unknown.
Breast cancer has long been recognized to be, in part, a familial disease (Anderson, 1972). Numerous investigators have examined the evidence for genetic inheritance and concluded that the data are most consistent with dominant inheritance for a major susceptibility locus or loci (Bishop and Gardner, 1980; Go et al., 1983; Williams and Anderson, 1984; Bishop et al., 1988; Newman et al., 1988; Claus et al., 1991). Recent results demonstrate that at least three loci exist which convey susceptibility to breast cancer as well as other cancers. These loci are the TP53 locus on chromosome 17p (Malkin et al., 1990), a 17q-linked susceptibility locus known as BRCA1 (Hall et al., 1990), and one or more loci responsible for the unmapped residual. Hall et al. (1990) indicated that the inherited breast cancer susceptibility in kindreds with early age onset is linked to chromosome 17q21; although subsequent studies by this group using a more appropriate genetic model partially refuted the limitation to early onset breast cancer (Margaritte et al., 1992).
Most strategies for cloning the 17q-linked breast cancer predisposing gene (BRCA1) require precise genetic localization studies. The simplest model for the functional role of BRCA1 holds that alleles of BRCA1 that predispose to cancer are recessive to wild type alleles; that is, cells that contain at lest one wild type BRCA1 allele are not cancerous. However, cells that contain one wild type BRCA1 allele and one predisposing allele may occasionally suffer loss of the wild type allele either by random mutation or by chromosome loss during cell division (nondisjunction). All the progeny of such a mutant cell lack the wild type function of BRCA1 and may develop into tumors. According to this model, predisposing alleles of BRCA1 are recessive, yet susceptibility to cancer is inherited in a dominant fashion: women who possess one predisposing allele (and one wild type allele) risk developing cancer, because their mammary epithelial cells may spontaneously lose the wild type BRCA1 allele. This model applies to a group of cancer susceptibility loci known as tumor suppressors or antioncogenes, a class of genes that includes the retinoblastoma gene and neurofibromatosis gene. By inference this model may also explain the BRCA1 function, as has recently been suggested (Smith et al., 1992).
A second possibility is that BRCA1 predisposing alleles are truly dominant; that is, a wild type allele of BRCA1 cannot overcome the tumor forming role of the predisposing allele. Thus, a cell that carries both wild type and mutant alleles would not necessarily lose the wild type copy of BRCA1 before giving rise to malignant cells. Instead, mammary cells in predisposed individuals would undergo some other stochastic change(s) leading to cancer.
If BRCA1 predisposing alleles are recessive, the BRCA1 gene is expected to be expressed in normal mammary tissue but not functionally expressed in mammary tumors. In contrast, if BRCA1 predisposing alleles are dominant, the wild type BRCA1 gene may or may not be expressed in normal mammary tissue. However, the predisposing allele will likely be expressed in breast tumor cells.
The 17q linkage of BRCA1 was independently confirmed in three of five kindreds with both breast cancer and ovarian cancer (Narod et al., 1991). These studies claimed to localize the gene within a very large region, 15 centiMorgans (cM), or approximately 15 million base pairs, to either side of the linked marker pCMM86 (D17S74). However, attempts to define the region further by genetic studies, using markers surrounding pCMMS6, proved unsuccessful. Subsequent studies indicated that the gene was considerably more proximal (Easton et al., 1993) and that the original analysis was flawed (Margaritte et al., 1992). Hall et al., (1992) recently localized the BRCA1 gene to an approximately 8 cM interval (approximately 8 million base pairs) bounded by Mfd15 (D17S250) on the proximal side and the human GIP gene on the distal side. A slightly narrower interval for the BRCA1 locus, based on publicly available data, was agreed upon at the Chromosome 17 workshop in March of 1992 (Fain, 1992). The size of these regions and the uncertainty associated with them has made it exceedingly difficult to design and implement physical mapping and/or cloning strategies for isolating the BRCA1 gene.
Identification of a breast cancer susceptibility locus would permit the early detection of susceptible individuals and greatly increase our ability to understand the initial steps which lead to cancer. As susceptibility loci are often altered during tumor progression, cloning these genes could also be important in the development of better diagnostic and prognostic products, as well as better cancer therapies.